Searching for the Seeds of the New Detroit Miracle—a photographic book project

As I prepare to travel to Detroit in a few days for most of June 2017, intending to knuckle down on two main themes, water justice and public education, with good leads in both areas, I’ve written this statement.

An examination of the shifting dynamics in the country’s iconic post-industrial city. I hope to reveal aspects of Detroit beyond what’s now termed “Ruin Porn” and the starkly contrasting ultra beautiful and expensive development.

Public schools such as Noble Elementary valiantly struggle to survive and offer high quality public education. I wish to portray this struggle. I’ve photographed the Boggs School, as one example of this struggle, and plan to again on my upcoming trip in June. I also photographed the now tragically closed Detroit Friends School.

I’ll work with We The People of Detroit, an organization co-founded and co-directed by Monica Lewis-Patrick and return to the Boggs School for their closing parade and block party.

I have been photographing, making movies, and writing about Detroit since 2010, initially awed by the abandoned and scrapped buildings and the enormous swaths of vacant land. Later I learned about burgeoning urban agriculture, the arts movement, numerous civic projects, innovative reuse of buildings, the rise of bicycling. Big Money pours in to build sports stadiums and commercial and residential housing. Little Money dribbles in to the remaining 80% of the area, inhabited mostly by African-American and other economically suffering people, many suffering from the recent bankruptcy of the city.

I ponder: will Detroit become the model for postindustrial urban resurrection or self implode?

I was raised on Chicago’s Southside from 1940 to 1955 when my family ignobly was the first to flee African Americans searching for new housing. I have always been ashamed of this part of my family history and recently realized that by returning regularly to Detroit, living in a Black neighborhood, part of the 80% land mass, I have returned. I’ve made friends among my neighbors, developed a portrait series about them, and I’ve interviewed some about changes in their neighborhood. The white owner of the house I stay in was educated very happily at Noble Elementary School. If I can gain the permission of its principal, Latoyia Webb-Harris, and staff and parents and students, I hope to show its current life.